Free Ninety-Nine

Space was the only thing that prevented me from mentioning Bon Iver’s new EP, “Blood Bank,” in this week’s column. Though not available commercially until January 20th, songs from “Blood Bank” have been circulating on MP3 blogs for the last month or so. As of today, all four songs from the EP can be streamed from the band’s MySpace page.

“Blood Bank” feels like the inverse of “Emma”: more capably engineered but musically slighter. I am becoming increasingly fond of the slide guitar duet in “Beach Baby,” and all of “The Woods,” which is one of the most delicate songs in recent memory about getting plastered. If anyone feels themselves about to get into a tizzy about the use of Auto-Tune on “The Woods,” they should probably go back to “The Wolves (Act I & II)” and listen for the Auto-Tune there, too.

Sasha Frere-Jones worked at The New Yorker as a staff writer and pop-music critic for ten years, beginning in 2004.